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Topic: [RG] The Orealyianis (Read 66145 times)

You guys are right, I really shouldn't have been too harsh and tight on myself. -_-

I just experienced a similar breaking down just yesterday, and well, it was kinda... refreshing, surprisingly.

That, and seeing the smile on every patient's face on our last day at the NCMH. As a student, fortunately.

*sigh of relief*

Umm, let's see...

Oh yeah, about the Isi. I was basically using a template similar to what I planned for the Furen Tze. Though, with Furen Tze it was more like a Post-Dark Age of Technology diaspora affair. This one is more like Earth IN SPACE, including the lack of a truly unified government. The UN, or in this case, the UP, technically doesn't count.

Continued from the Photos thread, since if I'm gonna post a somewhat off-topic discussion, it might as well be on my thread, am i rite? ^^ Swimming through posts to archive things can be hard with just the bare bones entries, let alone with all the resulting discussions included, which usually results in a page number increase of up to 500% from what I can tell.

I have the same (or a similar) problem myself. My brain is always zooming along at Mach 9 (as a teacher of mine so eloquently put it years ago), and I tend to expend a lot of that energy overthinking things. It has led to many embarrassing fits of rage directed at a person who had long since forgotten about some minor incident where they inadvertently insulted me. Fortunately, I have gotten better in the years past, and much better in recent years. My psychiatric treatment, therapy, and medication have helped me enormously. Without them, I probably would not be able to function properly as a member of society. My advice to you is: identify whatever you're doing that's causing trouble, be it overthinking, overgeneralization, jumping to conclusions, or whatever it is, and then work towards stopping that behavior. Willpower is key. Don't be shy about talking to friends for help. And above all, never take bad advice seriously. I can only hope that my advice isn't.

tl;dr: Take initiative and get help. Don't let the problem fester and eat away at your health.

The belief that you are the only person who exists relies on a lot of improbable underlying assumptions and contains gigantic chasms in logic. Applying Occam's Razor a few times, it's most likely that we all actually exist and have a tendency to question our existences. However, for the sake of demonstration, let's say that nobody else exists. You're the only real person in existence. Everything else is a simulation. If so, then why should you be sad about it? The people may not exist as flesh-and-blood humans, but they still exist as astonishingly sophisticated programs that can simulate emotion and sentience. One can become attached to a robot, as works like WALL-E have shown. Why not forge emotional bonds with the programs? They still think and have feelings. I could be a program for all I know. Heck, you could be a program. Should that stop anybody from enjoying life? If life is a game, then it's not a bad game. It gives you the chance to pursue happiness. You have to take initiative, that's all.

tl;dr: Everyone exists, especially you and I. Even if we were programs, we'd still exist. Nothing's hollow and joyless about that.

There is much to say about the Marakiri Republic. So much so that one or two reports may not be enough to convey all the details, though that may be the case, a quick run down of pertinent information would greatly aid anyone hoping to know more about these protegees of aeroastronautics, and dispel any rumors of them being a mere shadow beneath the larger Luzonian Knighthood.

HABITAT and POPULATION

Marakiri were originally hunter gatherers situated at the heart of the global desert, traveling from oases to oases as the food items were gradually exhausted from each one. It was with the advent of agriculture, and soon after animal domestication, that the first permanent settlements finally took hold.

Early Marakiri settlements, like their nomadic predecessors, relied on existing potable water sources and, depending on their lifestyle, the proximity of wild prey items and arable land for agriculture and animal husbandry. This led most groups to settle around oases, and later on, at the banks of large rivers in the periphery of the global desert.

However, like most other sentient species, Marakiri have a knack for altering the environment, which in their case was primarily expressed via the diversion of rivers and creation of artificial lakes. The scale and level of success of these efforts often determined the maximum viable population of a given settlement.

Eventually, technology allowed Marakiri to spread across the planet and colonize every single continent, adapting to virtually all terrestrial environments that they came across.

Habitation within artificial closed systems in extremely hostile environments, such as in the middle of the super oceans or in outer space, was the next step in Marakiri expansion. These efforts, however, were initially expensive, typically limited in duration, restricted to scientific, military, and industrial expeditions, and most of all, of high risk to personal safety.

It was only with the advent of advanced hydroponics, relatively cheap metamaterials, and most importantly, compact fusion technology, did the Marakiri truly expand beyond its traditional habitat.

Within the final centuries before first contact, Marakiri have heavily colonized the oceans, orbital space, Mortala II's natural satellites and several of its Lagrange points, and even the first and second asteroid belts, although large-scale colonization of the outer celestial bodies was not yet feasible due to the lack of an FTL drive.

With by then a population of approximately one hundred and forty billion, Marakiri were undoubtedly one of the most successful species in the history of the entire system. By this time, only about eighty six percent of the population, still resided on Mortala II.

For the remainder of the pre-contact years, these outer bodies would only be visited by remotely controlled drones, and at one time, a highly ambitious multi-personnel expedition which... ended in the team getting stuck on a distant moon, just in time for a massive civil war to break out back on Mortala II. Fun times.

The civil war, which nearly halved the population of several nations on Mortala II, resulted in extensive ecological devastation which accelerated the ongoing natural desertification of the planet, making it even more difficult to survive in the natural environment. As the Marakiri began to rebuild, however, the harrowing loss of people was quickly replaced as a massive population boom began to take hold. This boom in population will persist right up to the Marakiri's first contact with an alien civilization.

The widespread adoption of Luzonian FTL drives saw a massive paradigm shift in the way the Marakiri expanded, both within and outside their home system. The outer planets saw the arrival of entire emigration fleets, the already existing settlements in the belt and Lagrange points only grew in population, hundreds of unclaimed systems were quickly colonized and marked for further development. And for the first few decades at least, multiple, albeit ultimately failed, expeditions were sent out to scour the sector for fluoride-rich worlds and prepare them for potential terraformation.

The introduction of the by now unified Marakiri Republic to the Local Sector's spacefaring communities also aided in the Marakiri's expansions, giving birth to the first batch of off-system Marakiri diaspora.

Today, the Marakiri possess several thousand sparsely inhabited systems and a handful of core worlds, most of which are currently being terraformed through joint efforts between the Marakiri and its allies.

The Marakiri currently possess an approximate overall population of six hundred and forty billion, inclusive of ex-patriots and diaspora.

BIOLOGY

Marakiri are primarily terrestrial beings, though they are also capable of traversing water, and with the advent of personal flight packs, the air as well. Naturally, they possess one pair of arms at the front of their torso, one pair of legs at the rear, and a stubby tail at the end for balance, especially while the hands are being used to manipulate objects.

Marakiri possess a very stocky build, with an average mass of thirty kilograms and a height of fifty centimeters. Clearly, they are of comparatively minor stature compared to others. This is largely due to the vastly higher gravity on Mortala II, a staggering four gs compared to the common one or two gs of most other inhabited worlds. The Marakiri have also successfully adapted to the thick hot atmosphere retained by their planet's high gravity, their bodies functioning best at temperatures between thirty to forty eight degrees Celsius.

Their white skin is specifically designed to maximize albedo, as well as blend in with the environment, especially in areas with high concentrations of white sand and red shrubbery, the latter being the leading explanation for the red pigmentation on the Marakiri's back. The skin is also extremely water tight, greatly reducing insensible water loss.

Like most other creatures on the planet, the Marakiri are blind due to the relative inefficiency that eyesight would provide in such a thick atmosphere. They more than readily compensate for this using built-in biological sonar systems located throughout the length of their body, at varying heights, to allow for three-dimensional hearing. These organs are so precise that it can detect minute activity from tens of miles away. They are also sensitive enough to allow Marakiri to perform infrasonic communication, over distances of up to hundreds of miles in optimal conditions.

The Marakiri also possess an astonishing sense of balance, a byproduct of the creature's already acute equilibrioreceptors working in concert with the creature's sonar system.

Additionally, the Marakiri also has an acute sense of smell, which helps them detect and avoid hazardous agents long before they have a chance of causing real harm to the Marakiri, as well as locate distant sources of water.

Poisonous substances are a common offensive and defensive mechanism on Mortala II. And while the Marakiri have no poisons themselves, they do possess one of the most efficient detoxification systems and pound for pound most powerful immune systems of any complex creature on the planet.

Before the first major civilizations, the Marakiri mainly depended on their superior intellect to survive in their environment. This is reflected in their extremely high brain density and their large brain-to-body mass ratio, the latter being one of the highest on the planet.

Additionally, unlike most other creatures on their world, Marakiri are capable of fully bipedal locomotion, thus leaving their arms available for manipulating objects using their hands which possess opposable thumbs.

Marakiri possess a phosphorus-nitrogen biochemistry, and use Nitrogen Trifluoride for respiration. The mind-boggling rarity of a Nitrogen Trifluoride atmosphere makes it extremely difficult for Marakiri to afford living on other worlds, which is further aggravated by the fact that rudimentary breathing masks available in most markets are unable to synthesize compounds, but merely change the concentration of locally available gases.

Thankfully, the tremendous blow this had on Marakiri expansion was somewhat softened by the presence of foreign aid in the form of moderately affordable super-compact respiration systems courtesy of a joint scientific venture between the Choro Deidalus government and the ORIST. As expected, despite this display of good will, the Marakiri still find it difficult to expand compared to other species, which is why the largest concentration of Marakiri diaspora can still be found in the universally hospitable Athanatsu System.

Marakiri can be considered a eukaryotic species. Each normal cell has two sets of forty five chromosome-analogues, each set received from one parent. There are forty four unisexual pairs and a lone pair of sexual ones. By current estimates, Marakiri possess approximately fifty thousand to sixty five thousand genes. Like most other species, Marakiri have a binary sex-determination system, so that females have the sex chromosome-analogues 00 and males have 01. The 1 chromosome-analogues possess less information compared to its counterpart, resulting in higher rates of recessive diseases in males compared to females.

Marakiri are oviparous creatures. Fecundation is internal, and the female lays the resulting zygotes as physiologically independent, albeit extremely vulnerable, eggs. They usually incubate their eggs either under the sand or in a nest made of assorted materials with the mother, or father, laying on top. While these methods are still practiced to this day by several tribal populations, it is now more common for Marakiri to keep their eggs in specifically designed incubators, though quality-regulated incubation beds do exist for parents who want to personally take care of their eggs.

Marakiri are omnivorous, and have one of the strongest digestive systems of any complex creature on Mortala II. As such, cooking only really aided the Marakiri by making it easier to consume. On the other hand, the unintentional neutralization of some harmful agents during the cooking process has slightly reduced the resilience of the Marakiri's digestive system, especially in highly urbanized communities, though still not enough to warrant much concern.

Marakiri are relatively light sleepers, requiring only six and a half hours of sleep to maintain optimal function. They can also go for up to three days without sleep and suffer no permanent damage to their mind and body, though this tends to weaken their overall functioning and prevent the body from effectively repairing damaged tissue.

I wasn't sure if the text limit could hold all the text for part to, so I decided to split part two into manageable portions.

Stay tuned for the rest.

EDIT:

It really did!

And I thought the culture portion as a whole was small enough.

The Marakiri Republic: Revisited: Part 2

PRE-MODERN SOCIETY

Marakiri are social creatures. They are skilled at utilizing systems of communication for self-expression, exchange of ideas, and organization, and as such have created complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, ranging from families to states to the current all-encompassing Republic. Social interactions between different groups of Marakiri have established an extremely wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals, which together form the basis of their society and culture.

Before the advent of industry, procurement of both food and water, which were performed via manual and animal labor, were the main forms of economic activity, especially the former. These societies were subdivided, according to their method of food production, and to a lesser extent, the way by which they collected water.

Concerning food production, these subdivisions were the hunter-scavenger-gatherers, pastors, horticulturalists, and agriculturalists.

Hunter-scavenger-gatherers produced food through the daily collection of wild plants, tubers in the dry expanse and fruits in the oases, and the hunting and scavenging of wild animals, which range from small underground worms to large herbivores. Hunter-scavenger-gatherers travel constantly from oases to oases in constant search for food. Because of this, they build neither permanent villages nor create much artifacts, and usually exist either as small bands or tribes, numbering less than a dozen or never above a hundred, respectively. However, in later times, some societies managed to stumble upon areas with particularly abundant resources, such as in the coastal mountain ranges. These groups began to live in larger groups and form complex social structures, the largest of them becoming what Modern Era sociologists considered Nomadic Kingdoms. Mobility and carrying capacity also limit the size of a hunter-scavenger-gatherer society. The presence of stratification within most tribes was relatively subdued, and decisions were made via basis of majority opinion. Leadership was in most cases informal, with varying individuals stepping up to the task depending on the group's current predicament. The family is the main and usually tightest social unit, with most members of society being related through birth or marriage, or in some societies, even both. This type of arrangement requires that the family as the premier social tool, whether it be for production, protection or education.

Pastors used a more efficient form of subsistence. Instead of hunting or scavenging for food, members of this type of society domesticated certain animal species to meet their dietary needs. Pastors were still nomadic, a consequence of moving their cattle from one water source to another. Because their food supply was far more reliable, pastors can support larger populations. Eventually, food surpluses became common, and with fewer people needed to produce food, some managed to divert their efforts towards more complex activities. This gave birth to dedicated artisans, who crafted tools, weapons, and clothing. Healers and other formerly part-time workers were also allowed to spend more time refining their practice. The production of goods and services encouraged trade within, and sometimes without, the group. This economic cycle helped create inequality, as some families acquired more goods than others did. These families then gained power through their purchasing power. The passing on of property from one generation to another helped centralize wealth and power even further. Over time, hereditary systems of leadership began to form, which managed to eventually supplant informal leadership as the primary form of government.

Horticulturalists utilized fruits and vegetables grown in gardens as their main form of sustenance. The plots of land are usually obtained by clearing portions of forest commonly found in oases. Most horticulturalists use a slash-and-burn method of raising crops, though the specific degree of deforestation is subject to each group's preference. The wild vegetation is cut and burned, and the ashes used as fertilizers. Horticulturists use manual labor and rudimentary tools to cultivate the land, which usually remains viable for two to three harvesting cycles. When the land loses its nutrients, it is abandoned and a new plot is made. Some group manage to exhaust large portions of a specific oases, only to return several years later to repeat the process. More experienced groups eventually began rotating their garden plots, making each garden last longer, and in effect allows them to stay in one area for a fairly long span of time. Even more experienced groups have managed to replace the slash-and-burn method with a multi-tier method of farming which allows the cultivation of multiple levels of the forest canopy, giving them even longer loitering time than others of their kind. This has allowed them to set up mid- to long-term habitations, resulting in the first villages. The size of a given village's population usually depends on the amount of land available for farming, thus village sizes can range from as small as sixty people to as large as four thousand. These societies have a level of technology and complexity similar to pastors. However, the horticulturalists' far more static nature allows them stay in a given area for longer periods of time, which in turn allows them to trade more often with passing groups. This has led some groups to adopt barter as a semi-frequent method of acquiring certain types of food and goods, including the highly sought out meat products produced by certain pastors.

But it was the agriculturalists which truly jump-started the development of advanced society. Using technological breakthroughs like the plow and scythe to cultivate crops over a far larger area than horticulturalists could ever hope to maintain, agriculturalists managed to create a greater surplus, which resulted in the very first towns. These towns became centers of trade supporting various leaders, scholars, artisans, traders, and religious leaders who did not have to worry about locating nourishment. The Agricultural Singularity was the term coined by Modern Era sociologists to refer to the technological leap that led most groups to adapt the practice of cultivating crops and raising farm animals. The massive increase in food supply resulting from this movement led to an unprecedented population increase. Greater levels of social stratification soon followed. As villages and towns began to occupy the limited number of water sources, conflicts with other communities inevitably occurred. Farmers gained a habit of hiring warriors for food in exchange for protection against enemies. Officially recognized systems of leadership began to take form in the most advanced of agriculturalist societies. These leaders began to hire warriors by the hundreds to protect the town from opposing factions. The rest of society would in turn pay tribute to these leaders, which they would then use to maintain themselves and their band of warriors. In this way, the leadership managed to indirectly "farm" the people for resources.

Society followed a similar trend of development when it came to matters of obtaining water. Here, society was subdivided into water carriers, mist catcher, dam builders and canal builders.

Water carriers obtained water by extracting it from natural sources and storing it in prepared containers. The first containers were made from eggshells and hollowed out roots. Leather canteens and clay pots soon followed. Later on, the use of glass bottles, usually covered in fiber and sealed with a soft wooden plug, became a common site in the more affluent members of nomadic society. Despite advancements which lead to increased carrying capacity, water carriers were still ultimately subject to natural sources for replenishment, putting a strict limit on a group's range of travel.

Mist catchers, on the other hand, were not as tightly bound. Certain fabrics were discovered to be capable of catching the desert's morning mist, condensing them into small droplets which could then be stored in containers. By using enough of these fabrics, groups were capable of traveling the open desert indefinitely, allowing access to areas previously inaccessible due to distance, some even managing to discover new oases. This development also led to wider use of persistence hunting, even allowing some groups to hunt down certain prey which would have been otherwise impossible to sufficiently exhaust.

Dam builders were the next type of society to emerge. As people began to create permanent settlements, it soon became clear that the dry season caused certain water sources to drop below the level necessary to maintain adequate irrigation for crops. This greatly limited the maximum capacity of any given oases, curtailing further development. To get around this limitation, certain groups built barriers upstream, forming artificial lakes in the process. The very first dams were made from wood and other plant matter compressed into a thick interwoven mass which prevented water from seeping through. As technology advanced, more and more groups transitioned to a mix of rock and plant matter. Even further down the line, groups abandoned plant matter altogether, using cement-like materials instead. While this allowed the society to flourish despite the dry seasons, this also has the unfortunate effect of reducing flow downstream, which lead downstream societies to condemn, if not outright declare war, on the dam builders in question.

Canal builders provided a solution to a different but related matter. While dam builders managed to increase a given area's capacity for water, the problem of distributing this water efficiently still remained an issue. Canal builders solved this problem by building vast networks of canals leading to, or near, the crops themselves, facilitating ease of irrigation as well as increasing the size of arable land. Coupled with dams, this allowed canal builders to maintain larger farmland compared to other societies, which in turn lead to larger populations. Water diversion via canals also created the same set of trans-societal issues presented by damming, however.

For several thousand years, these Pre-Modern societies, as they were called, flourished in small pockets throughout the global desert, and in some instances, the vast coastal mountain ranges which encircled the region.

Eventually, another technological leap would once again change the face of society. With the invention of the gear system, technologies like windmills and waterwheels, and later on fossil fuel-powered engines, became a possibility. These breakthroughs allowed people to complete more work with a vastly smaller labor pool. This caused an exponential increase in the rate and scale at which goods were produced. The production of food quickly shifted to large commercial plantations where tractors, mechanical mills and other newly developed tools are used to decrease needed labor while still increasing production. As a rather, the large numbers of former farm workers were shifted to facilities where the very machines which took away their jobs were being produced, further increasing both efficiency, resentment and, most importantly, irony. As populations exploded, yet again, and machines became more and more refined, sometimes to the point of complete automation, many workers saw their future in the quickly expanding service industries. The more enterprising members of society even began setting up their own businesses, becoming leaders in their own right, some even managing to pose a credible threat to already established powers, something which the common people viewed with a strange mix of fear and anticipation. It was also during this time that technologies such as firearms, cannons, airships, and motorized land vehicles, were born. These developments changed the way societies competed with each other, both militarily and economically. Altogether, this period of massive technological development became known as the Mechanical Revolution.

Several centuries later, electricity would be discovered and harnessed as a resource to power a new breed of machines, ones which ran on electricity rather than kinetic or chemical energy. This development allowed societies to greatly reduce the physical machinery needed to transmit energy over long distances while at the same time making the entire process exponentially more efficient by reducing energy loss associated with friction. Electricity also fostered the creation of a large number of previously unfeasible inventions, such as illuminating filaments,shock barriers,wireless telegraphs, and the very first chemical batteries. On the other hand, the demand for electricity caused a considerable increase in fossil fuel consumption, leading to increased pollution and prevalence of associated diseases. Less than two centuries after the advent of electricity, numerous mechanical societies have already evolved into mature electrical societies.

As time went on, more and more technologies were developed, refined, and ultimately, combined. There came a point when the fruits of technology became so ubiquitous, so unified, as to render previous societies unable to compete. This marked the birth of the first modern societies. It was during this time that the field of Modern Microphysics rapidly took form. Efforts to further the field culminated in the creation and application of thermonuclear devices, thereby marking the birth of the first Nuclear societies. It was also during this time that the very first motorized heavier-than-air aircraft was born, though the idea never really took off quite yet due to the prevalence of aerial ships.

Nuclear societies were far more efficient than their predecessors. Possessing technologies capable of providing large amounts of power with, if handled properly, relatively little environmental impact, they were also significantly cleaner than fossil fuel societies. With the creation, and proliferation, of increasingly efficient energy storage methods, the notion of non-fossil fuel-based vehicular travel became more than just a dream for Nuclear societies. Most mistakes made by the very first Nuclear societies only served to enforce higher standards in later societies. It was during this time that motorized heavier-than-air aircraft finally spread its wings, seeing much service in the interception of both traditional and nuclear-capable forces during the Third Global War. Research into the power of the atom continued until yet another breakthrough was achieved: Controlled nuclear fusion.

Fusion societies possessed all of the qualities of Nuclear societies, but had power far greater than was previously available to those who came before it. The vastly increased levels of industrial automation in fusion societies were for the most part counteracted by their constant seaward expansion resulting from rising populations. Miniaturization of existing technologies became a rising trend in these societies thanks to continuing breakthroughs in energy storage technology. This led to the creation of the very first batch of affordable low-altitude flight-packs. Not long after the birth of the first fusion societies, research into space technology experienced a massive boost in funding due to previously unforeseen circumstances which threaten the survival of Mortala II's inhabitants. It soon became possible for the Marakiri to maintain primitive habitations in orbit.

Orbital societies started out as small habitats numbering less than a hundred individuals at any given time. These very first orbital societies relied primarily on ring mining, research and development, advanced textile manufacturing and spacecraft construction in order to maintain their economy, with workers spending month-long shifts on board the habitats before orienting the next batch and returning to the planet to recuperate. Life was stressful, highly restricted, and most of all, dangerous. It was with the development of advanced hydroponics, relatively cheap metamaterials and compact fusion technology did life on board become tolerable enough to the common civilian. These developments also allowed for the construction of far larger habitats, making way for the first full-fledged city in space.

Eventually, it became possible for Marakiri to erect a permanent presence beyond Mortala II. Permanent habitats were constructed on Mortala II's natural satellites and in several of its Lagrange points. The societies which formed in these locales were known to most people as "moon" and "deep-space" societies, respectively. They were fairly similar to traditiona orbital societies, but far more independent from the surface governments. They usually preferred to trade with each other instead of with the surface, primarily due to the difficulties presented by latter existing on the bottom end of Mortala II's powerful gravity well. Industry-wise, moon societies tended to be generalists compared to the deep-space societies' primarily manufacturing-oriented industry.

As civilization continued to expand, the Marakiri eventually spread to occupy the Mortala System's system's first and second asteroid belts, though colonization of Mortala I proved to be highly impractical due to its exceedingly volcanic and corrosive environment. Like Mortala I, the other, outer, parts of the system remained untouched, primarily due to the immense distances involved, making large-scale colonization extremely unfeasible. It would take an unlikely visitor to Mortala II for the Marakiri to finally colonization of the outer bodies, and beyond.

Contemporary Marakiri society formed shortly after the civilization's first fluke of a contact with an alien civilization: The Luzonians. It was with the reverse-engineering of Luzonian FTL technology, as well as the realization that an entire intra-galactic society was waiting for them beyond the confines of Mortala, that pushed the Marakiri to unite under a single all-encompassing government: The Marakiri Republic. Current Marakiri society is generally characterized by a strong sense of unity between members of the race, as well as a powerful urge to expand despite, or perhaps because, of their need to search for other Fluoride-rich worlds. Several other inhabitants of the Local Sector took notice of this and began assisting the Marakiri in their search, with some going one step further and actually assisting in terraforming efforts aimed at select planets in the Marakiri core systems. In an effort to display their gratitude to their neighbors, as well as a display of friendly economic and technological competition with the Luzonians, the Marakiri dedicated themselves to honing, and expanding, their aerospace industry. Today, Marakiri society is the largest producer of public aerospace craft in the Local Sector, as well as the third most advanced in terms of military aerospace craft, locked in a perpetual tie with the Luzonian Knighthood.

Despite all of this, old grudges die hard and certain portions of contemporary Marakiri society tend to drag down the civilization's overall loyalty rating. It is yet to be seen whether this is merely the death throes of the older generations' nationalistic ideologies, or a sign of bad blood just waiting to explode and cause contemporary Marakiri to fracture into its millions of constituent pieces.

Mortala II is a very magnetically active planet. Makes you think how beautiful its Aurora would look like in contrast to the vast desert beneath it which happen to be dotted with lights from the oases-centered cities.

Desert Culture refers to the cultural group encompassing the majority of the global desert's inhabitants. It may also include cultures not necessarily based on the global desert but nevertheless borrow heavily from it. Desert Culture is by far the largest of all Marakiri cultural groups. Intensive studies conducted by Modern Marakirologists suggests that early on, each Desert-based band or tribe had its own unique culture due to their relative isolation from each other. However, as time passed and groups became more and more connected, the resulting mix of material and customs gave way to a smaller number of amalgamated cultures.

Desert Culture has always held an appreciation for the Fine Arts.

Gastronomy, in particular, is a vital component of Desert Culture. The acquisition of sufficient food in a region as sparse as the global desert has lead people to formulate ways of preserving portions of their hunt, especially during exceptionally lean times. As society advanced and the fear of starvation became less and less of an issue, the focus shifted towards satisfying one's palette. The methods and concoctions once used to preserve one's quarry were now sought by people for the flavor, aroma or texture which they manage to bring out. In particular, the sugary substance, known as "Kora," stored in the trunks of certain plants, once used primarily to prevent spoilage, were now being harvested to satisfy the Marakiri's innate attraction towards sweets.

Some substances, while not particularly useful for preservation, also saw greater use. While the dew of certain animals have always been vital to pastors, the not as nutritious bodily fluids produced by certain animals were by now also seeing use in a wide variety of dishes in a wide variety of manners, including but not limited to sauces, marination, and maceration. It has also become common for Marakiri to create juices by extracting the fluid of different plants and animals, with "Korai," a small sweet grape-like fruit, and "Tortala," a prolific sand-dwelling worm, being some of the more well known flavors due to its relative abundance and year round availability.

Unlike most other cultures, cooking took a primarily back seat approach in the desert, with the consumption of raw food being the norm rather than the other way around. Still, it is by no means an abandoned art as the many Desert-based cooking manuals would attest to.

When it comes to the actual consumption of food products, people of the desert initially used the leaves of the fan-like Tofu tree, though later generations switched to glass or ceramic plates. Food was brought to the mouth by hand, though in cases of skewer-roasted food items it was eaten right off of the stick. Later on, one-handed utensils like forks and chopsticks were put to wide use, with the free hand holding the plate.

Desert Literature is heavily based on poetry and has a strong leaning towards the oral form. It mainly focuses on the robots, robots everywhere on harmony with the environment, society and the ethereal. It is divided into the Mundane, Fictional and Ethereal.

Mundane Literature includes anything that is not based on fiction. Examples of the mundane include travel literature, essays and technical manuals.

Fictional Literature covers anything that is based on non-factual information, and are mainly used for entertainment, speculation, ethical instruction, and generally to exercise one's perspective and imagination. Examples include science fiction, fantasy and alternate history.

Ethereal Literature is the last, and arguably most complicated, of the three divisions. It comprises of all literature concerning spiritual, cosmological and philosophical matters. While the majority of Marakiri consider it as a legitimate category, a small percentage prefer to divide its contents between the other two divisions.

Before the advent of voice recording technology, literature was mostly disseminated via oral means, and later on, through etching on mud tablets or tree trunks.

Despite their inability to see light, Desert Culture is also quite versed in most of the Visual Arts, appreciating it through their keen sense of vibrolocation.

Desert Architecture, in general, takes an exceedingly pragmatic approach. During nomadic times, structures were tents made primarily from heat resistant hide that were held up using bone or light tree trunks. As people settled down, structures were designed to maximize the use of arable land. Homes were mostly made of interconnected underground tunnels and caves located on the very edge of oases, the surface used to cultivate a variety of hardy crops in the case of agriculturists. Community fences and walls made of bone and plant matter also became common, mostly to discourage scavengers and predators but also to mark territorial boundaries.

Later, more advanced housing designs took advantage of newly developed irrigation techniques, sporting multiple tiers of personal overground gardens in most cases. In the more larger cities, large-scale vertical farming projects became a very common sight and was mostly seen as a powerful display of prosperity and technological and industrial superiority. Likewise, large fortifications, commonly stretching deep underground to prevent burrowing invaders, were seen as a symbol of wealth and military might. However, perhaps the most formidable displays were the large-scale damming and diversion projects conducted by the greatest of desert-dwelling societies. Nothing held as much sway in the desert people as the power to tame life-giving water itself, something which a number of nations were not shy of using as a form of defense, and in rare cases, offense.

The only moment when pragmatism is eschewed for aesthetics is in the case of theaters, statues and other structures designed primarily for aesthetics or posterity reasons. These are usually situated in the outskirts, in positions where it would not deprive currently existing plantations of much needed sunlight.

Desert Crafting was traditionally done by individuals to support the group, whether it be spear making, net weaving, or any other forms of tool creation. As some people were freed from subsistence food acquisition, people began to create a career out of crafting. Artisans, as professional craftspeople were called, usually focused on a particular craft or category of crafts. Some entered weapon crafting, others pot making, with many other doing something else. Of all the different artisans sought by the more prominent societies, it could be said that a skilled scribe, also known as a record crafter, was the most sought after of them all.

Drawing and Sculpting are one and the same, even having the same word, in Desert Culture, something which holds true for all other cultural groups. Desert Drawing and Sculpting shaping a given substance, usually clay, into a desired form. While once done by hand, it later employed a variety of tools to achieve greater accuracy.

Painting also existed in Desert Culture, though it was appreciated not through sight but through the combination of texture and aroma produced by the pigments. Early paintings consisted of thick, usually aromatic, pigments applied on wood, stone or clay tablet, which were all smoothed out unless the artist deliberately did not want to. While initially applied using the hands, brushes made of plant fiber eventually took over.

The Performing Arts is where Marakiri truly shine.

Dancing encompasses a wide variety of styles, though there are some things which are common to most of them, such as smoothness of flow, fast movement and repeated circular patterns. Dancing is performed before, during or after most important events, including a successful hunt, a bountiful harvest, a particularly good transaction, victory over rival groups, the construction of a new home or the birth, marriage, adulthood or death of an individual.

Music is a very vital branch of culture for the auditory Marakiri. In Desert Culture, this usually takes the form of verbal sounds or musical instruments mimicking the desert environment. The desert wind and the chirping of certain animals are replicated by whistling lips and flutes, known as "Fuhofu," the latter being initially made of leaves and eventually wood and metal. The rustling of shrubbery is copied by, Tesaga, purposely made half-weaved fiber mats which are waved across the air. The sound of digging animals are mimicked using the maracas-like "Taratara." And so on. Music often takes the form of fast paced auditory reenactments of major meteorological events, such a sandstorms, thunderstorms, flash floods or earthquakes. They are usually accompanied by dance or song, both of which serve to further accentuate its mimicry of nature. Musical pieces were once thought directly by musicians to their students. However, with the development of musical symbols, it became possible for musicians to spread their work through the written word, primarily via clay slabs.

Puppetry, and by extension Clockwork Animatronics, is another major branch of the Performing Arts. Puppetry has its roots in the stuffed trophies which some groups carried with them. They were usually used to reinforce the oral retelling of the hunts in which the trophies were acquired. As people became less nomadic and began to tell a larger variety of stories, these symbols became more articulate, intricate and varied, with some rare societies even using the dried husks of once living people. There was even one particular group which used live people, whose consent may or may not have been taken, and tied them to ropes before lowering them onto stage. Today, those who practice this have relinquished the use of non-consenting individuals.

During the Mechanical Revolution, clockwork automatons saw great use by people who applied them in their puppet shows, sometimes to the point of creating "fully automated puppet shows" which brought several of them to such fame that some societies commissioned for the creation of animatronic theaters.

Theatrical Arts encompasses all performances concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, sound, puppetry, music, dance, or any of the lesser known performing arts. Initially used to relive important events, it also became a medium by which fictional stories were told. Desert-based theatrics usually concerned themselves with major historical events in their particular society, as well as matters of social, environmental, philosophical and spiritual importance.

Festivals are an important part of Desert Culture, especially for the horticulturalists, agriculturalists and certain pastoralists. Festivals are used to celebrate major events such as harvest time, the seasonal slaughtering of animals, the creation of a new farming plot, the birth of a new generation of cattle, and in the case of hunters, the success of a particularly memorable hunt. It can also be used by societies to celebrate their conquest, alliance, union or any other significant relation with neighboring societies. Minor, more personal, events are also celebrated, such as birth and marriage anniversaries. Owing to their blind nature, the Marakiri calendar is incomplete, and as such only capable of distinguishing between the years and seasons. It is for this reason that festivals are usually clumped together into a single day at the start of a given season. These four days were soon known as "Toharu," or "Festive Days." The alternative was to celebrate the event at an arbitrary day within the season that it belongs to, which was usually the case for most personal matters. It was only with the combination of visual-auditory conversion systems and telescopes did it become possible for celebrations to get assigned to specific days, though the majority of society-wide celebrations are still placed in Toharu.

Desert Cultures had a variety of ways by which they entertained themselves. Storytelling was a primary form of passing the time for the very early Marakiri. It was mostly a communal activity done in the middle of a campfire, with adults sharing their experiences to the group's children. Stories with spiritual and philosophical themes were also quite common, even for very young audiences. After the story, listeners of all ages are encouraged to critique the storyteller and the stories they tell. As communities grew, it became more and more of a household activity, though elders who mentor the community's children as a whole still continued to do it at times. This task eventually passed on to professional storytellers and writers in the more urbanized communities.

The Arts in general was considered as a form of Entertainment. Music, dance, puppetry, and all others were used by most communities.

Games are quite prevalent in the desert peoples' culture. Most games for children were simplified versions of daily activities performed by adults. Examples include "Tarasi," a blanket term for twig throwing games, Siriro, a group-based game of tugging, and Kurela, which means foot-racing. Adults, on the other hand, preferred more serious competitions like, "Taralo," or spear darting, "Kureha," which means sparring, and "Sepata," competitive tree-climbing. Highly competitive games were even used by certain societies as a form of proxy warfare.

Desert Culture initially encompassed a staggering variety of languages. However, due to increased interconnections brought about by trade, alliances, unions and conquest, this has slowly been whittled down via process of fusion and outright extinction. Today, Hakiri serves as the main language of Desert Culture and Marakiri civilization as a whole. There are other, smaller languages that are still heavily used in some regions. The remaining ninety eight percent of the original desert languages merely survive either as dialects of the more successful languages or as sole possessions of extremely obscure tribal groups.

Politics in the global desert was initially dominated by anarchic tribes. However, with the advent of agriculture, the majority of societies adopted monarchies, whether it be in the form of patriarchies, matriarchies, plutocracies or theocracies. It was with the Mechanical Revolution that most societies finally saw a change of leadership as a large number of monarchies were overthrown or graciously backed down in the face of corporations, communism and fledgling democracies.

There existed a certain political etiquette known as "Jonari" between the more advanced and environmentally aware desert-based cultures. This mostly manifested in times of inter-societal competition. Created with the intention of reducing the damage incurred to the environment as much as possible, those found not obeying this ruleset may find themselves at war with all other nations bounded by the rule.

Religion in the desert was initially characterized as vastly, if not purely, Monotheistic. Additionally, the stories and characters mentioned by these Monotheistic groups were so similar as to be completely interchangeable at times. This has, throughout history, driven certain societies to unite the Monotheistic groups under a single body. Most achieve this through peaceful means, even serving as the bridge for their respective societies to form alliances or in extreme cases actually unite. More aggressive groups, on the other hand, rode through the wars conducted by their nations. Ultimately, the vast majority of followers were peacefully assimilated into a single group by the time of the first Electrical Societies, the rest being assimilated into Polytheism, Animism and Deism.

It was during the rise of the first large settlements did some societies began to lean towards Polytheism and Animism. Some societies which managed to spread their beliefs to their neighbors began to specialize on serving specific entities in their shared mythology. Some political leaders even managed to make their citizens worship them, giving rise to the first examples of institutionalized Leader Worship. By the time of the Mechanical Revolution, several groups managed to independently developed and convert to Deism and Agnosticism. Leader Worship also grew, mostly in communist and corporate rule societies. Eventually, Agnosticism gave rise to Philosophical Atheism by the time of the first Electrical Societies.

Despite all other types of beliefs, Monotheism still dominates the vast majority of Desert Culture at ninety seven percent, and is slowly rising.

A quick post to get people oriented about this particular piece of Chivi technology employed by the Chivi Silent Ops, the Empire's Premier Special Forces.

Chivi, being small legless stumps and all, aren't necessarily the most physically capable of people, something which would really wreck the Chivi Silent Ops' chances at fielding their own non-robotic field personnel. Thankfully enough, the same mastery of cybernetics that allowed them to survive the great bio-disaster of the past has also been successfully harnessed to create the Chivi Silent Ops' Standard Issue Armor.

Silent Ops' Armor possess a multitude of functions, including some not present in standard civilian suits. These functions are divided into several suites, each one enhancing a certain aspect of the operative's natural ability. While more experienced agents are more capable of controlling their suits compared to rookies, allowing them to install more functions, the basic setup each new operative gets is as follows:

Electronic Warfare Suite

Mental HUD - Displays general status of armor and user. Tracks energy and ammunition usage, among other things.